London has long been hailed as the to go place for business but is it soon to lose its reputation to other major regional cities? As we build out our TAaaS business we take a look at the reasons for our choice for an operational research/graduate hub in Bristol.
Since its initial reception of the title of capital city in the 12th century, London has become a bustling hub of variety, business and the up and coming. But with more and more people choosing regional cities as operational bases for their business over London, is it at risk of losing its reputation?
London does have many advantages and will not be losing large swathes of business to the UK regions anytime soon, but as people balance life style, job/work diversity and wish for an affordable city experience, Bristol and many of the other main UK regional cities (like Dublin in Ireland) are experiencing growth. For those that don’t want to commit to London, maybe Bristol really is opening a new door and showing that while London may be the capital, but it isn’t all that the UK can offer for work.
Bristol and London have a lot in common, obviously not in size and population but in diversity and inclusiveness. Sure, both have their issues, but generally both cities have a fantastic approach to accepting and including a variety of cultures. Both also contain large amounts of students due to hosting numerous universities and language schools. Admittedly London is host to more, but the student and adaptable culture remains. This leads Bristol to have great hordes of talented young people that is just waiting to be tapped into, like London, but without the ‘brand’ and of course a much lower living cost!
While both are cities, London has the blessing and curse of being a large, close packed city, while Bristol, thanks to it’s slower growth is more spread out. For many, London’s close and confined nature is a great positive as nothing is ever that far away and people are easy to access, whereas others see that as a negative, there’s no space to move around and prices reflect the desirableness of the location.
With many graduates struggling to get started on the career and housing ladders, we have seen from our careful review of where young talent is converging cities outside London, especially Bristol, attracting many new graduates. Initially, many graduates are happy taking on any work just to give themselves the income and ability to set up in rented accommodation in a city of their choice. With the increase in tech, environmentally sympathetic industries and the changing scale of businesses from start-ups to major corporates, Bristol has quite a draw on Talent from the home counties and M5 corridor.
What do you think? Are regional cities a focus for your business, acquiring high quality affordable talent? Is moving some of your business to cities other than London a way to get many of the advantages without the price tag and congestion, or is it just wistful thinking? Get in touch and have your say at; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
